Shadehouse Expo

This week the team from MLH who have been busy working in the shadehouse hosted an expo showing the rest of the school what they have been doing. 
Love your work team!

Enviro Heros

Meet Mako and Angus...

I want to acknowledge these two today and the hard work that they have been putting in behind the scenes at our school.  At the beginning of this term these two awesome young men kept turning up at the gardens and asking if they could help.  Some of the things that they have achieved this term have included; empting the compost bin into the gardens and around the fruit trees, weeding and mulching in the orchard transforming it from an area that was geeting a tad overgrown to a lovely looking corner of our school and organinsing a team of helpers who empty the class compost bins every week. They have also been raking leaves and making sure that our scraps are covered with a brown layer so we can keep away pests and also to give our compost a good balance of nutrients.  AS WELL as all of this...they have also been part of the team who have been beavering away in the shadehouse!!

These boys have been extremely hard working and self motivated often carrying out tasks I have asked them to do in their own time as well as coming up with ideas themselves.

Kau mau te wehi e tama!  You really know what it means to be kaitiaki and you have really shown that you care about our environment!

Enviroschools Diary Term 1

2019

It's 2019 people!  Time to revive the good old Enviro blog!  We would love it if you could follow us and if you like what you see leave some encouraging comments or give helpful advice. 

It’s been a busy term so far tidying up and getting things back in place after
the summer holidays. Here’s a roundup of some of what’s been achieved so far...

 The shade house team have been busy with Kauri, propagating more seeds and getting things growing in the shade house. There are 40 native plants now ready for a new home. They are going to go to the Te Wherowhero Lagoon to help with the waterway restoration there. The original funding for the shade house came from the Sisterson Lagoon Trust so it feels good to be able to give back.

 The orchard has been weeded and all the trees have had some of our beautiful compost spread around them as well as some fertiliser.  They have also all had mulch blankets put around them and are ready to grow strong through the Autumn.

 The compost team have been HARD AT WORK!  These guys really deserve a medal!  They have emptied the compost bin of all it's wonderful contents topping up our vege gardens and giving our fruit trees a boost.  They have sent out new compost buckets to all the classes and got our new compost up and running!













We have begun to establish a butterfly garden and after a bit of a slow start, we now have oodles of caterpillars and have lots of chrysalises starting to appear too. It's so lovely to see the tamariki out at the garden everyday checking up on the caterpillars.

The class gardens have been weeded and the strawberry plants thinned.  Then we planted them up  with lots of new vegetables and herbs ready for us to eat and for some Wainui Beach School Masterchefs to have a go at Marakai 2019!

 Enviroteam...this year we have decided to not have a formal application process but rather just open it up to any child who wants to help with the real "keen beans" ending up with special responsibilities.  It has been awesome to see so many of our students coming out to help.  Ka mau te wehi Wainui Beach School!

A few pictures during morning tea...

Here are a few pictures showing off our school Enviro efforts in the class gardens...

The garden has been enjoying the rain and is looking very green!   Our community have been very kind and we have had many seedlings donated to us over the past few weeks to put in our gardens...silverbeet, onions, fennel, strawberries, beetroot, lettuces are just a few of the plants that we have been donated to plant.  We have also planted more basil and some tomatoes.

We are also really excited about our new garden going in.  This garden is due to our growing roll as well as our growing enthusiasm for growing our own kai:)

We have been making and adding more decorations to the quiet area.

Here's Charlie and Bella playing noughts and crosses in the quiet area.

Our  passionfruit vine is PUMPING!

Making Bags

Last week, the team from Flag the Bag came in to show us how to make a re-usable bag from an old t-shirt.  Here are some of the fab results.  We are planning to make a lot more bags so we can give them out at the craft fair and encourage people to FLAG THE BAG!

We were lucky enough too that Nicky brought in the Flag the Bag team's bag chain.  The chain represents all the bags that were used in one hour at one supermarket!  It was SO big, it nearly stretched right round the field and Karma had to climb up into the crows nest to try and fit it all in the photo!

More about the sand dunes...

After we had heard a little about the sand dune plants we looked at the dune that some students from Wainui Beach School had planted 6 years ago.  The plants were still there and the dune was looking good.

Next we went along to the planting site in front of the surf club.  Some of us were a little disappointed because the site where the Coast Care Group wanted us to plant is great fun to slide down!  Mr Logan explained how the dune was eroding and that if we didn't plant it and stay of it that the dune would disappear and then the Surf Club would be in danger too.  We decided to be Kaitiaki of the dune and tell people why it had been planted up and let them know how important it is to stay off the dune.

A planting team from Room 10 stayed behind to plant the dune, while the rest of us went to a SECRET spot for a picnic:)

Our "secret" spot was down the back of Mrs Harris's section by the Hamanatua Stream:)  We got to see how the stream winds it's way down the hills to the sea.  Ms McVey told us all about how high the stream can get sometimes and how it too can cause erosion sometimes.

It was a great day out and about!  We all learnt a lot and it felt good to help out!

Sand Dune Resoration

Room 10 and Room 3 went down to the sand dunes in front of the Wainui Surf Club to meet some of the members of the Wainui Coast Care group and help them plant up the dune in front of the Surf Club building.  We talked about how plants on sand dunes are important because they hold the sand in place.  We learnt that if we had no sand dunes that out beach would disappear.  The creatures who live in this zone would loose their homes and the buildings on the beach front would be in danger of eventually washing away too.

Here's what Hugo, Israel and Felix wrote about the dunes...

Sand Dunes...

When you are on the sand dunes you are killing plants and making it easy for tsunamis to get in onto the land. If we don’t have sand dunes we will have no beach. Did you know that if the dunes were gone, the beach front houses would be on the beach, literally.

By Hugo.

Sand Dunes          

The thing that I learnt today is that  sand dunes are really important.  If you slide down them  and  do it too much, the plants will fall down and then the houses will fall down into the sea. IF THERE'S NO PLANTs THERE’s NO DUNES!!!!!!!!    

BY Felix

Sand dunes

One thing I learnt about dune plants is salt spray, they need to survive salt spray that is when a wave crashes down on the dunes and makes them salty.

Next is erosion, for an example if there were no dunes the waves would take dirt, sand and houses because the dunes hold the dirt and sand that’s why they are so important.

Did you know a tsunami wiped out 10,000 people in Indonesia once at Phuket.

By Israel